Community Arts Award/Individual - Nana Yaa Asantewaa

Nana Yaa Asantewaa is known regionally, nationally and internationally as a professional artist. A Louisville native and graduate of the University of Louisville, her imagination and love of humanity chronicles 25 years of 'spreading the word.' She is affectionately known as "Mama Yaa," a "keeper of the African oral tradition" that was passed on to her from her grandmother and family elders. "Mama Yaa's" stories are presented nationally on Kentucky Educational Television's Telling Tales and on the Louisville Free Public Library's web site. She is the founder and producer of the Kentuckiana African America series, now in its twelfth season. She has written numerous arts education plays that are accompanied by companion teacher study guides.

"Mama Yaa" has performed for the Internationale Fifth Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival in Ghana, West Africa by invitation of the Vice President of Ghana and has shared the art of storytelling across Kentucky, in her travels to the Virgin Islands and at Gullah Festivals in South Carolina.

In addition to her personal art, Nana Yaa has also demonstrated extraordinary efforts as the President Emerita of the Louisville Arts Council, Inc. that she founded in 1998. The Council's mission is to assist community arts and artists by nurturing relationships, fostering multi-cultural diversity, providing tools and resource materials, and advocating for growth and economic development of the community. She developed community-wide arts education programs while she was the Family Services Director at the Presbyterian Community Center and Sankova Academy summer arts and discovery camp programs in collaboration with LAC, Inc. Her vision is to touch, teach and reach youth through the arts and link the arts and the community.

Nana Yaa Asantewaa has received the distinguished City of Louisville Merit Award and represented the city as a delegate to the 1994 International African and African American summit in Gabon, Central Africa. She has received the City of Louisville's Community Service Award, the Jefferson County Service Award, the Kentucky Foundation for Women's Sallie Bingham Award and the Humanitarian Award of the Delta Sigma Theta-Louisville chapter among many others.

On March 10, 2005, she will be honored as the "2005 Woman of Distinction" by Louisville's Center for Women and Families. Wherever she goes, she leaves a piece of herself to rekindle the fires of our humanity.

Previous recipients: Elmer Lucille Allen, Wayne Smith, Mary Yeiser, G. Caliman Coxe, Emily Wolfson, Donna Bradley-Morton, Elizabeth Paxton, Dorothy Brockman, John Edmonds, Tom Sternal, Billie Jean Osborne, Kenneth H. Clay, Saundra Kilijian, Jarrett Boyd